


No Go

by Nabielka



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29073105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/pseuds/Nabielka
Summary: In which Susan returns from the wardrobe.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19
Collections: Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2020





	No Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WingedFlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedFlight/gifts).



It was only when she found that she had no more tears to cry that Susan sat up. Her hand, which had been clutched tight against Aslan, was stiff from cold and stillness. 

She pulled away. After this time, Aslan’s body – for that was what it was now, just a body – had grown cold and no longer seemed to provide what warmth it had still seemed to give as the Witch’s forces moved away. She was cold. Her knees hurt. Moving her hand a little so as to warm it, she felt something wet near to where it had lain, but whether she felt her tears or what remained of the blood and foam she and Lucy had tried to wipe away, she did not know. Something dark seemed to remain beneath her fingernails. 

“Lucy?” she said, into the quiet. 

At the beginning, Lucy had sobbed. She had still a child’s way of crying, loudly, and she had burrowed against Susan for some small measure of comfort and warmth. But as her crying had abated into some quieter despair, she had pulled away, garnering more comfort from what remained of Aslan than from her sister. 

A beat, maybe two. It was hard to tell. The air felt still, heavy, and Susan could not have said how much time had passed since the Witch and her forces had abandoned their victim and their revelry and had departed. She felt, perversely, both that she had just heard the Witch’s jeer and the gallops and the beat of wings and that she had lain there for some interminable period, that this too was the site of their end and not only Aslan’s. 

The dawn was approaching; it seemed a little lighter already. Inexorably, the time of battle was approaching, whether their forces could cut off the Witch from her castle or not. Aslan’s battle plans. She struggled to remember them, the scouts and the intended positions of the various species, and shivered. The idea of battle seemed very far away, for now Aslan was dead and what hope had they without him? 

“I’m here,” came Lucy’s voice, barely breaking the quiet. Above Aslan’s body, some movement: first a hand and then the outline of Lucy’s head as it lifted. 

Susan reached up, over the mountain of Aslan’s body. Lucy’s hand, when she grasped it, was not warm. Susan squeezed tight, as though there were any warmth she could give to her sister. 

“I wish we weren’t,” she said, not any louder, not sure if she wished for any reply. She had no desire to see Lucy’s face crumple in the way it had done when her fervent assurances about the land in the wardrobe had been met with increasing impatience. But she could not see her face. She herself felt empty, as though by crying she had rid herself of all emotion. “I wish we had never come here.”

Her other hand was still against stone. She was using it to hold herself up. But it had been many hours since she had eaten anything, and she was so cold; she felt her arm bend and then she was falling, falling… 

*

And she found herself on the ground. 

She blinked furiously. So much light! Her fingers were on something soft and warm, not the cold night ground. 

After a moment, she became aware that she was still shivering, and ran her hands up and down her arms. Her arms through the wool did not feel cold. 

She pulled herself up so that she was sitting on her shins. There she was on the carpet and there was a suit of armour and a painting of a lake with a forest growing around it. 

Impossibly, this was the Professor’s house. 

Susan sprang up. Where were the others? Lucy, at least, who had been with her? It seemed like something out of a dream to be here again, not lying upon Aslan’s body in despair. Perhaps it was so – perhaps she had fallen asleep. It had been so long, and she had been so cold, so scared… If it were a dream, no doubt it was also an improvement. But where were they?

Her feet carried her forward. She must find the others. She must – 

The room that housed the wardrobe was behind her. She stopped for a moment, in fear. Then, her heart beating fast, she made herself take one step and then another, and flung open the door. But the room was empty, the door shut. She ran towards it, pulling the door open, though she did not at all wish to find herself back in that cold land in that night. 

All the coats were there. Susan felt her heart jump to her throat, and a wild joy surging through her. Taking care to leave the door as open as she could force it, she leaned carefully inside. The size of the wardrobe made her take a hesitant step in. Her outstretched arm met only wood. The doorway, for now, was closed. 

*

This made for little real jubilation. The wardrobe had been closed before, when Lucy had come running from the room and calling that she’d come back and been away for hours to tea. 

It thus remained a risk, as long as it remained in the house. 

*

When they became concerned for Lucy, she and Peter had gone to the Professor. This time she went alone, and he listened in the same quiet way, save that he became rather pale listening to her. 

Being unable to quite explain how she had managed to find herself back and safe, she turned at the end to the issue of the wardrobe. Surely it would have to be removed, or the door locked securely, and then they would all avoid the danger. 

But instead of agreeing, he said, “You say you Aslan dead?”, as though he had not heard her for the past minute.

“Yes,” she said, “the Witch killed him.”

“Poor Narnia,” said the Professor, as though to himself. “That tree must have fallen.”

“Professor?” She felt cold again, but the chair was solid against her back; if she pressed herself against it, it was still there. Had she mentioned the name of the land? She was not sure. She must have done. “What tree? We walked into a forest.”

The Professor’s gaze fell back upon her. “A tree there was that would have kept the Witch out, or so Aslan once said.”

“You knew? When we came to you and said our sister was talking of another land through the wardrobe and you said, if she were neither mad nor lying, you knew it to be there?” In her fervour, she leaned forward. “You knew that we could – ” 

“I have never known that wardrobe to be anything other than a wardrobe,” said the Professor softly. “Indeed, I doubt you will ever get back to Narnia again by that route. Perhaps it’ll happen when you’re not looking for it.” He looked at her for a moment longer and shook his head. “You don’t seem to want it to. Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?”


End file.
